[RCL]: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45 No one asks Lazarus if he wants to be resurrected. That’s the fascinating part about our gospel story today. No one asks if he wants to return to a broken and hurting body, tangled relationships, and the responsibilities of his finances and his job and his…

[RCL]: Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10 Even though we are in the season of Easter, our lives may still feel like one long Lenten discipline of social distancing and fighting illness. Even as we proclaim the truth of Easter resurrection, Good Friday’s shadow still looms long. We know that Jesus, the…

Today, the first Sunday after Easter, is traditionally known as Low Sunday. Low Sunday—that’s a tremendously unflattering nickname for us as the Church. Last week we presented the triumph of the church year. We announced to the world the Good News of Jesus Christ: Jesus died and rose again to new life for love of…

[RCL] Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 70; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32 As we continue our journey through Holy Week, our attempt to be faithful to Jesus in his hour of need, we need to ask: what prevents us from following him? What drives us away from his presence? What keeps us from living up to our aspirations…

The terrible war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended in December 1995. The fighting between Serbs and Croats had set itself up along ethnic and religious lines and so deepened the divisions between the warring factions that it seemed impossible to imagine any type of peace, much less healing and reconciliation. A Franciscan priest began a…

[RCL] Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33 Our gospel today begins with some of Jesus’ most controversial words in the New Testament. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” That sounds pretty intimidating!…

[RCL] Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23 or Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30,36-43 A rock, a ladder, and a promise to a man who is running for his life. That is what we get in our story from Genesis today. Jacob is in a very bad situation. He stole not only…

Jesus is not making a whole lot of sense in our gospel today, at least at first blush. He tells the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and people have beat their heads against this text for generations trying to figure out what in the world he was talking about. Clergy, lay people, seminary professors and…

We encounter a strange image for the coming Messiah in our lesson today from Isaiah 11: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Now picture what this looks like, you’ve seen it before. A tree gets chopped down to a stump, and a…

[RCL] Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37 Waiting is the hardest thing to do because it feels like you’re not doing anything. And it seems twice as hard when you’re young. When we’re children, Christmas always seems eons away and we think the end of school or our birthday will never…